Tag: Clive Palmer

When Campbell Newman lost his seat

Campbell-Newman-Pre-Polling
Up to 60% of Queensland’s eligible voters will vote early or register a postal vote in the State election.

Queensland heads to the polls tomorrow, four years and nine months after the historic defeat of Campbell Newman and the LNP Coalition. I thought it would be interesting and educational to revisit those restive times, when Campbell Newman became only the second sitting Premier since Federation to lose his seat.

Mr Newman’s seat of Ashgrove was taken by Kate Jones, who ironically is quitting politics in 2020 to pursue other interests. The Tourism Minister’s last hoorah this week was to attack Clive Palmer on national television, saying his claim about a Labor death tax is “bullshit”.

Even with Campbell Newman losing his seat in January 2015, it was a close-run thing. Incoming Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk formed government with the help of one independent, Peter Wellington. The Labor Party increased its majority by four seats in the November 2017 election, despite Mr Wellington deciding to quite politics. So tomorrow’s poll is a contest between two women – Annastacia Palaszczuk, who is attempting to win a third successive term, and Deb Frecklington, in her eighth year in politics, hoping for a promotion from her highest position in the Campbell Newman government (assistant Finance Minister). Whoever wins, we are stuck with them for four years, courtesy of Queensland’s second referendum on fixed terms, which was got a Yes vote in 2016 (after a No in 1991).

In researching this topic, I uncovered a FOMM written in early February 2015, a year which also saw Prime Minister Tony Abbott ousted by Malcolm Turnbull before the former completed his term.

My blog on the Friday after the 2015 Queensland election called for more compassion, in politics and in daily life. It was also an attempt to soothe the “bruised egos and wallets of those who backed the wrong team”.

Flashback:2015

We talked about compassion over the festive season, and how we could all try a bit harder. A few wise people wrote to me at the time and suggested that first you have to give yourself a break. But that week I felt an unlikely pang of compassion for Tony Abbott, under siege from his own party and the media. Just imagine how he might have felt going into the Press Club on the Monday after Queensland voters turned on the LNP.

The PM has a thick hide, obviously, but I imagine he might have had to do some meditation or yoga before he fronted the media pack. While it seems clear that the LNP’s narrow defeat in Queensland, with Premier Campbell Newman losing his seat, was all about that government’s arrogance and can-do-ism, inevitably Tony Abbott got the blame.

In typical style, the PM did not refer to the Queensland election in his prepared comments for the Press Club, although some of his detractors rode that particular elephant into the room. You could hear the knives being sharpened from up here in the mountains. A backbencher got a run on Radio National this week saying he had texted the PM to say he no longer had his support. Whether the inexplicable decision to bestow a knighthood on Prince Philip was the last straw or whether they’ve been keeping a list, we’ll never know. Whatever, I felt a bit sorry for the man. Being PM is an impossible 24/7 job that creates the kind of stress you and I would not want to know about.

“What did Tony Abbott ever do for us?” I hear you say. True, the Abbott government seems to care less about people who struggle financially; the ones to whom a $7 co-payment is a big deal. This (Federal) government scores low on Compassion, as did the former LNP (Queensland Government), which apparently thought it could do what it liked and no-one would take it personally, or be able to do anything about it.

The C-word I’d most like to introduce into contemporary politics is an old-fashioned one – Civility. ‘After you’, and ‘if it’s not too much trouble’, and ‘how has your day been?’. It costs nothing be civil with one another, but from my observations of political life here or in Canberra over the past 20 years or so, there is too much of the ‘us and them’ and ‘let’s get ‘em’. If you’re an Opposition Labor MP you have to vote along party lines, which means you disagree with everything the incumbent government has to say and ditto for the LNP when Labor is in power.

On that basis, the Queensland Parliament will be a shackled institution. The former Premier of Queensland would have us believe that hung parliaments are bad. But just why are they bad? Why not call it Consensus government? Imagine a Queensland parliament with 30 Labor members, 20 Libs, 10 Nats, 10 Greens, 14 independents and five ratbag parties to give us a bit of a giggle and keep the bastards honest. Select the most intelligent and fair-minded member as Speaker and we would indeed live in interesting times, when pollies would have to talk to one another to come up with policies they can all agree upon.

Meanwhile back in 2020

The other election preoccupying not only Australians, but the world in general, is the November 3 US presidential election. Sixty million Americans (about 40% of the expected turnout), have already voted – which may be portentious. Reactions to the polarising President, Donald Trump, have been extreme. Musician Bruce Springsteen, for example, says that if Trump wins, he is moving to Australia.

Bruce has any number of options to work his way through Australia’s migration red tape. As a business migrant he can just headquarter his music business here and tick all the boxes, especially the one that asks how much money he is bringing with him. He could also apply for an ‘exceptional talent’ visa. Above all. he has a very Australian name.

The numbers of American-born people living in Australia has almost doubled since 2001, when the Census identified 60,000. By the 2011 Census, this number had increased to 90,000. Five years later in 2016 it topped 106,000. On the annual growth rate, the numbers of US-born in Australia should now be around 120,000, the sixth-largest American population in the world.

As happens everywhere, people end up living somewhere they went to visit and then met someone (and stayed). But affairs of the heart and family ties is just one part of the puzzle. A 2015 investigation by the Sydney Morning Herald concluded there were economic factors at play. Australia, to a large degree, survived the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), which was an attraction for Americans looking to prosper somewhere else in the world that speaks English.

Post-covid and post-Trump, there is every reason to think Australia may again become the magnet for disenfranchised Americans that it was during the Cuban missile crisis (1962), the Vietnam war (1955-1975) and after 9/11 and the GFC.

The Trump factor is fairly obvious, as the ABC’s Lee Sales discovered when interviewing former US Secretary of State Richard Armitage (2001-2005), about next week’s election.

When the life-long Republican was asked what would happen if Donald Trump wins, he simply said: “Got any more room in Australia?”

FOMM back pages: Citizen Kang for President

 

 

 

 

Three (Political) Billboards Outside Caboolture, Queensland

political-billboards-Queensland
Billboards outside Caboolture, Queensland and all the way to Canberra

A week before Easter, I was driving back from Bribie Island when my travelling companion pointed out the first of three political billboards. The first read: “Don’t Vote Labor”. A little further down the road: “If Shorten wins, you lose.”

The third billboard featured the face of a minor party leader known for her dubious skill in empathising with those in the community who have a morbid fear of ethnic minorities.

“I’ve got the guts to say what you’re thinking,” the political billboard states.

As much-quoted advertising guru Todd Sampson said on Twitter: How do you say racism without being racist? It’s surprisingly clever…

That’s not an endorsement, I’m sure, just an adman’s view of what works.

My passenger said: “Don’t they have to say who authorised those billboards?” I didn’t see anything.”

That’s the problem with advertising on billboards – the message has to be extremely pithy and in letters big enough to be read from a car passing by. The driver has only a few seconds to take in the message; no chance to read and absorb the small print which, as required, must state the name, affiliation and domicile of the person authorising the advertising.

These political billboards were sighted in the seat of Longman, which was wrested from the LNP with a 4.73% swing by Labor member Susan Lamb in 2016. After the dual-citizen fracas, Lamb resigned from the seat but won it back again at a by-election in July 2018.

Longman includes the satellite suburbs of Caboolture and Morayfield and the retirement communities of Bribie Island. High pre-poll support for One Nation had highlighted Longman as the electorate to watch, but on the day, Labor held the seat against the LNP with a two-party preferred swing of 3.7%.

One Nation was third on the ballot with some 14,000 votes. Perhaps it was the inclusion of six minor parties and an independent alongside the four main contenders that did the damage, but the LNP lost support.

As The Conversation observed at the time, the Coalition’s by-election primary vote plunged 9.4% in Longman, compared with the 2016 election. The 3.7% swing against the LNP’s Trevor Ruthenberg vindicated election analysts’ warnings about the reliability of single-seat polling.

“While senior Coalition MPs have since put this down to an ‘average’ anti-government swing at by-elections, few in the party would have expected such a kicking in a historically conservative seat,” wrote Chris Salisbury, Research Associate at the University of Queensland.

As Salisbury warned, by-election results should not be extrapolated to likely voting patterns at a general election. But those three billboards outside Caboolture, might, I suggest, be a warning to the local sheriff to watch her back (cultural reference to a 2017 movie by Martin McDonagh, starring Frances McDormand).

As we set off the following week on a circuitous back roads journey to Canberra, I inevitably began noticing billboards, As a rule, billboards positioned outside rural towns advertise food, accommodation, fuel and agricultural products. Sometimes you will see a religious message and on occasions a hand-made billboard damning fracking or coal mining. But a month out from a Federal election, it was no surprise to see political billboards as parties ramping up their profiles.

One of the most common billboards we spotted on the road proclaimed “Unsee This”, which turned out to be a house ad for a billboard company with space to rent.

As you’d imagine, advertising your wares on the side of the highway is an expensive business. Most billboard companies offer a 28-day minimum ‘lease’.

A campaign source told me it cost about $10,000 a month for a billboard and $16,000 for a mail-out to the electorate. So all up a major candidate is up for $60k to $100k for a Federal campaign

United Australia Party leader Clive Palmer estimated he has spent $50 million on various forms of election advertising, including ubiquitous billboards featuring the man himself with upstretched arms. The original pitch was “Make Australia great”, but UAP has swung away from that slogan to wordy headlines about fast trains and zonal taxing.

One of my musician friends who drove through New England on her way home from Canberra spotted a Barnaby Joyce billboard in a field. She seemed surprised, maybe assuming that after the former deputy leader’s fall from grace in 2018, he might have quit politics for good.

But no, Barnaby Joyce is once against contesting the seat of New England for the National Party, seemingly unbeatable in an electorate where he holds a 16% majority. As one of the best-known politicians for the wrong reasons, Barnaby doesn’t really need to pay to have his face recognised in the electorate.

Inverell farmer Glenn Morris, while not running for New England or putting his face on a billboard, nonetheless attracted a lot of media attention. He put climate change firmly on the agenda with a five-day horseback ride over the Anzac Day weekend. Morris and his horse Hombre rode from Glenn Innes to Uralla, wearing a drizabone raincoat with the words “Climate Action” on the back, urging voters to consider the environment in the upcoming election.

“This is an urgent message. We need climate action, we need our leaders to step up and we also need our community to demand more from our leaders,” Morris told the Northern Daily Leader

“I’ve watched too many elections come and go while I’ve been researching climate change, with no emphasis at all on the environment.”

That much is certainly true, with The Guardian saying that the partisan climate debate, characterised by hyperbole and misinformation, had paralysed Australian politics for a decade.

Labor is promising stronger policy which the Coalition has merrily dubbed “Carbon Tax 2.0”, claiming it will impose a massive regulatory burden on Australia.

As you may have read, among a long list of measures, Labor wants to set a higher emissions reduction target (45% by 2030, compared with the LNP’s 26%), reintroduce the Coalition’s abandoned National Energy Guarantee, launch a carbon credit scheme for heavy polluters, and implement strict vehicle emission standards.

As The Guardian rightly points, out, this is policy which may not even happen, despite Labor’s best intentions. “The Coalition is not showing any sign of having a substantial conversion on climate change. Labor will likely need the Greens to get various changes legislated and the Greens will want a higher level of ambition than is evident in this policy.”

As is apparent from its strong advocacy against new coal mines, The Greens will want Labor to exit coal sooner than later.

So even though many lobby groups are wont to call this the ‘climate change election’ it is entirely possible the long-running ideological deadlock will continue, with little or no change.

Sweden’s teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg says she wants adults to behave as if their house is on fire.

Unfortunately, the ‘adults’ in Canberra appear to have taken the batteries out of their smoke alarms so they can char their T-bone steaks with impunity.

For those who just joined us here at Friday on My Mind, yesterday was our fifth birthday! Give me a week to cogitate about that and next week we will have a completely subjective review of five years’ of FOMM. For now, enjoy the first episode, and, if you got up early on Wednesday to Dance up the Sun, good for you.

 

 

Why political parties can spam without penalty

call-centre-spam
Call centre image by Richard Blank https://flic.kr/p/dZhyjR

I should feel miffed, being one of the 14.4 million Australian mobile phone owners who did not receive an unsolicited text message from the political party led by the aspiring Member for Herbert, Clive Palmer.

Some of my Facebook friends, and even those not on Facebook, let the world know in no uncertain terms what they thought of receiving an unsolicited text from the United Australia Party (UAP), previously known as Palmer United Party (PUP).

Alas, I was not one of the 5.6 million people who received texts, so had to rely on second and third-hand reports to tell me they were (a) brief) and (b) geo-targeted, (the ABC’s example of a text sent to S-E Victoria promised fast trains for Melbourne – ‘one hour to the CBD from up to 300 kms away.’) Another forwarded to me by a Queensland reader promised a tax reduction of 20% for those in regional Queensland.

Those who were affronted by receiving the unsolicited text complained, but it fell on deaf ears because (a) it is not illegal and (b) it’s January and everyone is at the beach.

When asked about the electronic media campaign, Clive Palmer told the ABC the Privacy Act allowed for registered political parties to contact Australians by text.

“We’ll be running text messages as we get closer to the election because it’s a way of stimulating debate in our democracy,” he said.

Despite Mr Palmer and AUP receiving some 3,000 complaints, he told the ABC more than 265,000 people clicked through to the link ‘and stayed for more than one minute.’

The text should have come as no surprise, as United Australia Party has been letterboxing electorates for months with the party’s distinctive yellow colours and prominent use of the leader’s image framed against the Australian flag.

As I temporarily forgot that Mr Palmer re-badged and re-launched his previously de-registered party last year, I did an internet search for PUP. All I came up with was the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, a Canadian punk rock band and the internet acronym Potential Unwanted Programs (how fitting-Ed.)

It was an easy mistake to make, so thoroughly had Clive Palmer embodied the fledgling PUP (which he de-registered after serving only one term and ‘retired’ from politics prior to elections in 2016).

But last year Clive Palmer changed the name of the party he founded and under whose name he served as the Member for Fairfax from 2013-2016. As it happens, he re-used the historical name of the UAP, under which Prime Ministers Joseph Lyons and Robert Menzies served. He told The Australian last year that the re-establishment of a UAP was ‘a significant milestone in Australian politics’.

So it is true, alas, that registered political parties can text people they don’t know without fear of reprisal. All they need is a list and Mr Palmer, who says he does not own the list or know where it came from, told the ABC you can buy such a list from ‘any advertising agency in Sydney’.

According to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), the Spam Act allows registered political parties to send commercial emails and SMS messages to individuals as long as the message identifies who authorised the sending of the message.

Likewise, we are all fair game to receive unsolicited telephone calls at home leading up to an election (yes, I’ve had a few of those). You’d wonder why, though, given that telemarketing or cold calling has a 2% conversion rate.

ACMA says: “Opinion polling calls and calls from political parties, independent members of parliament, or candidates for election that contain a commercial element—that is, they are trying to sell you something or are seeking donations—are permitted by the Do Not Call Rules and may be made even if your number is listed on the Do Not Call Register”.

If that seems wrong to you, you can write, complain and generally make a nuisance of yourself by contacting ACMA. Tell them I sent you.

We have been dog-sitting/house-sitting in Brisbane, my laptop has been in the PC workshop for a week and it’s been too humid to think about much. So apart from tennis and binge-watching The Bureau, we have been mostly cut off from social media and its twittering masses.

The reason I knew about the UAP texting campaign was that a friend, who I will call Irate Step-mother of Three, cc’d me the reply she sent to Mr Palmer’s party. It was blistering.

Also invading our telephones and in boxes over the Silly Season were messages from people running  ATO scams (someone calls and pretends to be from the ATO, saying things like – if you don’t send us money immediately you will be arrested (and so on).

The recent round of scams prompted the ATO to provide an update and a warning on its website in December.

The golden rule, be it a scam, a marketing call or a (legitimate) electioneering contact), just hang up. You don’t even have to say ‘hello’.

As for unsolicited texts, you can delete and block sender, although you might be busy. As a marketing strategy, texting is gaining favour – the industry claims a 98% ‘open’ rate (email is 22%).

Professor of Law at University of Queensland Graeme Orr reminded us that other political parties use this tactic. Writing in The Conversation he said the Labor Party sent out texts ahead of the 2016 election purporting to be from Medicare itself, as part of its ‘Mediscare’ campaign (the LNP had talked about privatisation). This ploy led to a tightening of rules and a new offence of ‘impersonating a Commonwealth body’.

In breaking news yesterday, UAP sent out another text promising that if they were in government, they would ban the practice!

I take ACMA’s ruling on political texting and emailing quite personally. As my followers would know, I am obliged to publish a disclaimer at the end of every post where I offer subscribers the chance to opt out. All bloggers and purveyors of marketing emails and newsletters (don’t they have a habit of worming their way into your inbox), have to do this.

Registered political parties, however, can do whatever they like, so long as they don’t pretend the email/text came from somebody else. It is a travesty (something that fails to represent the values and qualities that it is intended to represent) – Cambridge Dictionary.

Now that I’ve been presented with a squeaky clean hard drive (even my contacts lists have vanished, awaiting an (edited) backup, this is the perfect opportunity to do a little electronic house-cleaning. Like everyone, I subscribed to far too many seemingly promising websites and newsletters in 2018. Yikes, some of them email every day!

The best solution is scroll down to the end of the document where you will find in the fine print an option to unsubscribe, or as the Urban Dictionary defines it:  To take yourself out of a convo (conversation) or email because it’s boring or has lost its initial humour.

That was an explanation, people, not an invitation.

Since you read this far, my subscriber drive to cover website maintenance costs is doing quite well but you only have till the end of January if you want to make a subscriber payment.  Follow this link (or not)